Craig Pruess – versatile film and TV composer, arranger, project leader and world music multi-instrumentalist — has a wide ranging musical output to his credit. He has composed the original music for the second series of the BBC’s hugely popular Five Days, written by Gwyneth Hughes and produced by Caroline Skinner, the cast included Suranne Jones, David Morrissey, Bernard Hill and Anne Reid.

Previously, he earned a British Academy Award nomination for the BBC’s 3-part groundbreaking drama Moses Jones for which he was also nominated for a Royal Television Society Award. In the press, the music was singled out as being an important element in creating the intriguing character of the series. One reviewer wrote, “Moses Jones pulses to surely the TV soundtrack of the year!” (London Metro)

Following the huge success of Bend It Like Beckham he has continued his working relationship with writer/director Gurinder Chadha and worked with her again on the Bollywood crossover film Bride & Prejudice for Miramax/Pathe and and later Gurinder’s It’s A Wonderful Afterlife.

Other feature film scores include The Mistress of Spices, starring Aishwarya Rai and Anupam Kher, directed by Paul Berges; Gurinder’s segment Quais de Seine for the French movie Paris, Je T’aime. Paul Berges’ short film Blue Funnel, set in Liverpool, starring David Yipp, featured a Chinese fusion score from Craig. He has also composed the music for Gurinder Chadha’s earlier, award winning films, What’s Cooking? (Denis Hesbert, Joan Chang) and Bhaji on the Beach.

His music is not restricted to Indian or African influences and other film credits include Rich Deceiver for the BBC; Blue Funnel for Paul Berges; Out of the Blue and Yellow Patch for Zarina Bhimji; and the short film, Boiling Point for Jason Lehel. His synth programming and Indian music skills have been used by mainstream film composers of the award-winning (Oscar) calibre of Danny Elfman, Patrick Doyle, Rachel Portman, George Fenton, Gabriel Yared and John Altman.

Craig’s TV drama composing credits include four full series (8 to 12) of the highly successful Peak Practice franchise for Carlton Television, plus Red Productions’ Jane Hall for producer Matthew Bird, penned by Sally Wainwright, starring Gillian Taylforth, Sarah Smart and Geraldine James; and a three part doccu-drama series for Discovery Channel, featuring Brazilian music Gold Diggers — The Biggest Bank Heist in History, with director James Erskine , about a $100 million bank robbery in Brazil in 2005 (the documentary got so close to the truth that the director had to flee the country!).

He was Indian music consultant and sitar performer on the film soundtrack of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire movie; Charlie & the Chocolate Factory; the album of Warner Bros’ A Little Princess; featured sitar player on Working Title’s The Guru, provided sound design and keyboards for John Altman’s work on Golden Eye; and keyboard sounds and musical textures for the BAFTA award winning Hear My Song and Hollywood Films’ Funny Bones.

Because of Craig’s prominence in the recording world he was invited to arrange tracks for Massive Attack’s 100th Window album and orchestrated their score for Luc Besson’s feature My Name Is Danny. He has also arranged tracks for Bond, Manic Street Preachers, Def Leppard, Dire Straits and played keyboards live with Mike Oldfield, with whom he worked on Tubular Bells II. Craig has arranged and produced two albums for SirCliff Richard, including hit singles Ocean Deep (1984) and The Only Way Out (1983). He played sitar on Katie Mellua’s No.1 album Piece by Piece. He is a co-writer, arranger, musician and the producer of the cult Afro fusion band Ganda Boys.

Craig has more than 14 best selling world music and chant records to his credit, regularly performing in concerts from Glastonbury Festival and WOMAD to Highgrove for HRH The Prince of Wales. He co-wrote and produced a modern, Western fusion album Eyes with Anu Malik, one of India’s top recording artists and premier Bollywood music director. With John Altman he co-wrote Terracotta an Indo-Afro-Jazz fusion record which has been released worldwide. Sacred Chants of Shiva, a project involving international humanitarian, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, has sold more than 10m copies in India, Bhutan, Pakistan and Nepal. He has tracks on Sony’s Chillout Classics 2 and on their film themes CD, ClassicScore, under the name Craig Pruess and the Film Theme Orchestra.